With the development of the Internet, people become increasing reliant on various electronic devices for various tasks in their daily lives. Many light weight and simple devices and gadgets, such as smart watches, health monitors, music players, climate controls, smart coffee makers, vehicle charging stations, navigation systems, sports equipment, set-top boxes, etc., are increasing taking over the functions of more complex and heavy duty equipment and systems, as well as the general-purpose computing devices (e.g., a general desktop computer, or laptop computer).
Many electronic devices and gadgets have smart chips and internal logic that allow them to be controlled through software-driven user interfaces provided on the devices. With the development of mobile network-enabled devices, such as smart phones and tablet devices, people are able to perform more tasks without location constraints. Many electronic devices and gadgets can become peripheral devices of a main user device (e.g., a smart phone or tablet device) and be controlled via respective proprietary software (e.g., a proprietary app for each peripheral device) installed on the main user device.
In a thriving market for these light weight and specialized gadgets, different manufacturers provide analogous products with their own designs of user interfaces and controls. Currently, there are no unified standards for the product designs, and the communication and information sharing between different types of products and/or similar products of different manufacturers. It is therefore challenging for users to explore and learn the different user interfaces and functions of different products they purchase. It is even more difficult for the users to share information created or gathered in their own gadgets with others who may or may not possess the same types of devices.
Today, many users are active participants of one or more social networking platforms. A social networking platform provides the means to connect people using instant messages, message boards, one-on-one conversations, or group chats, between social network contacts and people in different social network groups or online communities. A user accesses his/her own social network account via a social networking client application installed on his or her user device (e.g., a smart phone or tablet device). Users of the social networking client application have become accustom to the controls of establishing contacts, and sending and reading messages over a social networking platform. So far, the functions of the social networking client application are limited to communications between human users. Peripheral devices, such as a built-in camera, or microphone, can be used within the social networking client application as a means to capture user input (e.g., voice or image input) that forms the content of a message to be delivered to another user, but it is impractical for the provider of the social networking client application to expand support for controlling other types of peripheral devices due to development complexity, costs, and huge design variations among the different peripheral devices.